pray His mercy to save me from, or to let me
die. Oh, lad, if I could only die."

He bent down over the window-sill, crushing his forehead on his hands.

"John," I said, in this depth of despair snatching at an equally
desperate hope, "what if, instead of keeping this silence, you were to
go to her and tell her all?"

"I have thought of that: a noble thought, worthy of a poor 'prentice
lad! Why, two several evenings I have been insane enough to walk to
Dr. Jessop's door, which I have never entered, and--mark you well! they
have never asked me to enter since that night. But each time ere I
knocked my senses came back, and I went home--luckily having made
myself neither a fool nor a knave."

There was no answer to this either. Alas! I knew as well as he did,
that in the eye of the world's common sense, for a young man not
twenty-one, a tradesman's apprentice, to ask the hand of a young
gentlewoman, uncertain if she loved him, was most utter folly. Also,
for a penniless youth to sue a lady with a fortune, even though it was
(the Brithwoods took care to publish the fact) smaller than was at
first supposed--would, in the eye of the world's honour, be not very
much unlike knavery. There was no help--none!

"David," I groaned, "I would you had never seen her."

"Hush!--not a word like that. If you heard all I hear of
her--daily--hourly--her unselfishness, her energy, her generous, warm
heart! It is blessedness even to have known her. She is an angel--no,
better than that, a woman! I did not want her for a saint in a
shrine--I wanted her as a help-meet, to walk with me in my daily life,
to comfort me, strengthen me, make me pure and good. I could be a good
man if I had her for my wife. Now--"

He rose, and walked rapidly up and down. His looks were becoming
altogether wild.

"Come, Phineas, suppose we go to meet her up the road--as I meet her
almost every day. Sometimes she merely bends and smiles, sometimes she
holds out her little hand, and 'hopes I am quite well!' And then they
pass on, and I stand gaping and staring after them like an idiot.
There--look--there they are now."

Ay! walking leisurely along the other side of the road--talking and
smiling to one another, in their own merry, familiar way, were Mrs.
Jessop and Miss March.

They were not thinking of us, not the least. Only just ere they passed
our house Ursula turned slightly round, and looked behind; a quiet,
maidenly look, with the